Insurgent or just inconvient?
Nov 20th, 2007 by ashwin
Bilal Hussein, a renown and Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer with the AP, has been detained by U.S. authorities in Iraq since Apr. 2006. They suggest that the Fallujah-native’s unique access to terrorists and his inaction in fighting them makes him suspect. His defenders maintain that it is his compassion for all Iraqis, whom he has sheltered from violence numerous times, that has been misconstrued and blanketed as insurgence.
I’ll leave it to your comments. Should journalists be expected to act instead of just report on situations to which they have unique access? What actions are appropriate?
One of the Pulitzer-winners/AP
AP/Bilal Hussein
AP/Bilal Hussein - Terrorist assassination of an Iraqi election worker
AP/Bilal Hussein
To answer your prompt, there are a lot of things journalists can do to ease the situation in Iraq, but it’s silly to argue that physical attempts to thwart insurgents is, in any significant sense, one of them.
But according to AFP, “Hussein was detained April 12, 2006 after marines entered his house in Ramadi to establish a temporary observation post and found bomb-making materials, insurgent propaganda and a surveillance photograph of a US military installation.”
Still, this guy’s been held for 19 months and only today did authorities finally announce they’ll be bringing charges against Hussein and turning the case over to Iraqi judges. We all know that: (a) due process is a joke in the Army (Armies?) at war, and (b) arrests, justice and criminal allegations are a total black box in Iraq, where “security interests” have overshadowed any shred of accountability since September 11, 2001 (and historically prior).